Hello shoppers...


You get in line behind 1,426 people at the customer service counter at CompuBarn. You are carrying a 63 pound box stuffed with an iPad that electrocuted Pookie when the dog tee-teed on it. Your arms, feet and head throb to the beat of Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer playing overhead. You're next, 13 days later. You are waited on by a gum-chomping 2o-something who says, "Can I help you?" You fall over and die. You are buried in Hoboken, New Jersey in a grave marked with your iPad, that stray dogs pee on.

That's how we all go.  

"Can I help you?" - which is a closed ended question - which is a question that requires a "yes" or "no" answer - has killed more retail spending than every recession, depression and argument on the way to the mall over whether Grand Theft Auto IV is an appropriate gift for a 10-year-old, combined.

Between now and midnight December 24th, we shoppers will be asked dozens of closed-ended questions by employees working inside the stores we'll shop: "Can I help you?" "Is that all?" "Find everything alright?" "Anything else?" "Aren't you that minor blogger?"


Imagine how much jack we'd drop if employees asked us more engaging, nurturing, pro-active, sales-driven, open-ended questions: "What can I help you with?" "How can I help  you?" "What can I get for you?" "What else can I get for you?"

You're right. You'll spend enough as it is.  

It's an especially head-scratching moment when we're asked a closed-ended question at any agreed-to location inside a store where it's understood that a customer can stand on one side of a counter, an employee will (eventually) stand on the other and that customer will be engaged, by that employee.


Customer counters are built to help customers. Employees are paid to help customers at customer counters. Customers stand at customer counters to be helped. Why would we ever be asked, "Can I help you?"

Yet we are - more often than not.

Why don't employees ask more open-ended questions, regardless of where they encounter us, inside a store?

Nobody tells them to. It's not part of an employee's training. It's not a question employees are used to asking. It's an employee's knee-jerk reaction to an approaching customer. It's quicker to ask closed-ended questions, which receive quicker answers that require less thought. Owners and managers tend to emphasize quick and accurate skills in employees - running a cash register, stocking merchandise, cleaning -  rather than interpersonal skills.


Some examples...


-From Building A Better Business: An Owner’s Guide To Retail

The beauty of open-ended questions is that they encourage full responses rather than brief yes or no answers. Think how different the conversation would be if you asked ”Why did you study English?” rather than "You studied English, right?" The former leads to an actual conversation about what she wants and what she enjoys, while the latter invites a simple one-worded “yes” response.

-From Ask Her Open-ended Questions, www.askmen.com


-From The 2006 National Retail Association Survey


-From www.learnthis.ca

"The more open-ended questions employees ask, the more engaged they are with customers, and the more they begin to genuinely care about customers. Customers feel good, employees feel good. It's a win-win."

-Kevin Krause, VP of Marketing, Kum and Go

"When employees ask customers a closed-ended question, they will almost always respond in a way that doesn't reflect their true feelings - either because the question doesn't require them to think about how they really feel, or because they don't want to be a bother, or seem like they don't know, or are helpless, or stupid."

-Evan Baack, Author, The Road To Revolutionizing Retail

What we shoppers think, matters. What we shoppers don't know, doesn't make us stupid, or bothersome. It makes us shoppers! :)

Listen as you shop this holiday season. Are the employees at your favorite stores, using the killer "Can I help you?" app?

Tell them it's not helping.




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Phone: 515-480-4190
